Chapter 1- The Beginning of All Things

Hogsmeade. Ginny sighed through the bobby pins in her teeth as she tossed the hairbrush onto her bed. Professor Trelawney had divined the day before that Ginny's future would be bleak and miserable, she had taken a bludger to the stomach at Quidditch practice the day before that, and Snape had set her an extra foot of parchment for being, and I quote, "a disruptive, disorganized, disastrous excuse for a N.E.W.T.-level Potions student." The first Hogsmeade weekend of her seventh year had arrived not a moment too soon.

Butterbeer or under-the-table Ogden's? Mentally debating the merits of both, Ginny pulled her trunk open and had just begun to rummage when something caught her eye. She lifted the robes she'd just moved and found Hermione's jewelry box nestled in the

very bottom next to her own. Oh bugger. She must've grabbed them both when she'd left the Burrow a few weeks before.

Ginny pulled out the jewelry box, pushing aside a pair of socks, and stopped. A fine stream of sand trickled out of a loose corner of the box, granules bouncing lightly off the surface of her robes before disappearing into the folds. Curious, Ginny opened the box and peered inside.

The contents were sparse. Unsurprising, really, considering Hermione's personal sense of style. Ginny pushed aside an uncharacteristic strand of fake pearls, looking for the source of the sand, and drew back sharply at a shot of pain in her index finger. Bugger. Sucking on her wounded finger, Ginny cautiously shook the box, dislodging the contents in the offending corner.

A Time-Turner. The glass bulb was broken, sand and shattered glass glittering as they mixed with the baubles and jewels. Ginny freed her finger from her mouth and gingerly pulled a sliver of renegade glass from her fingertip. Blood pooled quickly on her skin. Unable to be contained by the slim width of her finger, a tiny stream slid over the side and dripped into the box.

The blood landed neatly inside what was left of the hourglass and quietly seeped into the sand, staining it pink. Ginny shifted to get a better look. The damaged hourglass moved ever so slightly. In the space of a blink, the jewelry box, the trunk, and the world as Ginny knew it vanished.

Ginny blinked. She blinked again. She blinked a third time and pinched herself for good measure. Somehow, in the space of an instant, Hermione's jewelry box had disappeared, her trunk had vanished, and the sky outside the window had become much brighter than it had been a moment ago. In the room, the four-posters and their red hangings were familiar, but foreign somehow, their contents and arrangement different than the room she usually called home. From the open door, voices were wafting their way up from the common room. Strange… most of the students had already left for Hogsmeade.

Bile crept up her throat. Ginny swallowed it down, forcing it and the dawning feeling of unease seeping into her stomach to stay contained.

One hand on her wand, she made her way down the staircase, back hugging the wall. The noises coming from the common room were jovial, unworried, but happiness could be forced. A few steps from the arched doorway, she paused, surveying the scene before her.

Harry, who hadn't been there a few minutes earlier and really had no reason not to be at Auror training at the moment, stood in the center of the room. Wearing robes that were rather out-of-date and a persona that was more in keeping with the twins than the Boy-Who-Lived, he paraded in front three boys Ginny didn't know, telling a story that was apparently very comical. A fire sputtered in the hearth behind him, the dying coals searching for fuel that wasn't there. The sofa on which the three unknown boys sat was a deep crimson velvet, familiar but brighter than the one she knew.

"So I said—"

"Who are you?"

Ginny started as the gaze of one of the unknown boys came to rest on her, followed by those of the room's other occupants. Slowly, she pushed away from the wall and stepped into the room. She looked between the boys, considering, before settling on Harry. "What are you doing here?"

Harry looked confused. "I go to school here."

"Went to school here," Ginny corrected. She stopped a fair distance from the boys, measuring the distance between them and the expressions they wore. "I thought you training with my brother today. Blow off your best friend?"

Harry's mouth pulled up into a comical frown that she had never seen him wear before. "I don't know you or your brother."

"I don't know you either," one of the other boys interjected as he stood and moved to stand beside Harry. "But I'd like to. Sirius Black, love. And you are?"

Ginny ignored the winning smile and the hand he'd extended to her, eyes narrowed. She looked him up and down, studying his face and the mane of artfully messy black hair. Whoever the boy was, he did look like a young version of the Sirius she knew, but…

She looked back to Harry. Brown eyes, not green.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me." Ginny's eyes slid closed for a brief moment. "You're not Harry."

"No, I'm not." The fake Harry smiled in a way Ginny was sure he considered charming. "I'm-"

"James Potter, I know."

The-boy-who-used-to-be-Harry-but-was-actually-James shot a grin at Sirius. "The one and only. My reputation precedes me."

"And you two," Ginny continued, ignoring James and Sirius and their mutual cockiness. She turned to the boys still on the sofa, easily recognizing their faces now that she was looking for them. "Lupin and Pettigrew, right?"

"My dear James, I do believe we're rather famous." Sirius looked positively delighted at the notion and not a little bit smug.

"Indeed Sirius, indeed. One has to wonder, though, who this 'Harry' is that she speaks of, and why I should be training with her brother, who is apparently my best friend."

Sirius drew back dramatically. "I thought I was your best friend!"

"Of course you are. Perhaps she is just confused as to which of my fellow Marauders is my best friend."

"Well she can't be related to Wormtail; she's too hot."

"She's sharp-tongued like Lily; maybe she meant 'girlfriend' when she said 'best friend.'"

"They do both have rather striking hair," Sirius paused here to wink at Ginny. "But Lily doesn't have a sister besides she-who-shall-not-be-named."

"Oh, Petunia!" James clasped a hand over his heart dramatically, falling back into Sirius. "The flower that withers in the presence of the fair Lily."

"The flower that withers in the presence of anyone."

"But especially Lily."

"Very true."

"Because Lily is hot."

"Yes, yes she is, mate."

"And she's my girlfriend."

"Not if you keep hitting on her sister." Sirius seemed to realize that Ginny was still standing there and extended his hand once more. "My apologies for James here; he must see the similarities between your beauty and that of your sister. What's your name, love?"

Ginny threw her head back in a sigh of annoyance and stalked out the portrait hole without answering or giving Sirius's hand a second glance, muttering under her breath about the bloody marauders and their bloody time and Hermione's bloody time-turner.